Samuel Griswold Goodrich | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of the Massachusetts State Senate | |
| In office 1837–1837 | |
| Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives | |
| In office 1836–1836 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | August 19, 1793 Ridgefield, Connecticut |
| Died | May 9, 1860 (1860-05-10) (aged 66) |
| Relatives | Charles A. Goodrich (brother);Abigail Goodrich Whittlesey (sister);Emily Goodrich Smith (daughter) |
Samuel Griswold Goodrich (August 19, 1793 – May 9, 1860), better known under hispseudonymPeter Parley, was an American author.
Goodrich was born atRidgefield, Connecticut, the son of a Congregational minister. Goodrich was largely self-educated, and became an assistant in a country store atDanbury, Connecticut, which he left in 1808, and later again atHartford, Connecticut, until 1811. From 1816 to 1822 he was a bookseller and publisher in Hartford. He visited Europe from 1823 to 1824, and moved toBoston in 1826. In 1833 he bought 45 acres (180,000 m2) in nearbyRoxbury and built a home in what is nowJamaica Plain. There he continued in the publishing business, and from 1828 to 1842 published an illustrated annual,The Token, to which he was a frequent contributor both in prose and verse. A selection from these contributions was published in 1841 under the titleSketches from a Students Window.The Token also contained some of the earliest work ofNathaniel Hawthorne,Nathaniel Parker Willis,Henry Wadsworth Longfellow andLydia Maria Child. In 1841 he establishedMerry's Museum, which he continued to edit till 1854.[citation needed]
Goodrich and his brotherCharles wrote books for young people. His series, beginning in 1827 under the name of Peter Parley, embraced geography, biography, history, science and miscellaneous tales. Of these he was the sole author of only a few, but in 1857 he wrote that he was the author and editor of about 170 volumes, and that about seven millions had been sold. An English writer,George Mogridge, also used the name Peter Parley, raising objections from Goodrich, who had the prior claim.[citation needed]
In 1857 he publishedRecollections of a Lifetime, which contains a list both of the works of which he was the author or editor and of the spurious works published under his name. By his writings and publications he amassed a large fortune. He was active in Whig politics, and was elected a member of theMassachusetts House of Representatives in 1836, and of thestate Senate in 1837, his competitor in the last election beingAlexander Hill Everett, and in 1851-1853 he was consul atParis, where he remained until 1855, taking advantage of his stay to have several of his works translated intoFrench. At the end of his consulship, he was presented with a commemorative medal.[2]
He returned to the United States, and, in 1859, he publishedIllustrated Natural History of the Animal Kingdom. He died in New York and was buried in Southbury, Connecticut where he lived for a short time. His funeral was widely attended by a vast concourse of persons. Two hundred Sunday School children headed the procession to the cemetery.[3][4]
Hurrah for Daniel Boone!Three cheers, sir, for the gentlemanWho first observed the moon!")
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Goodrich, Samuel Griswold".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 238.
